Photophysical origin of blue OLED degradation

Rapid degradation of blue organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) is arguably the biggest challenge facing the OLED display industry today. While various mechanisms are known to cause intrinsic OLED degradation, the reason that blue OLEDs are so uniquely unstable compared to green and red devices that employ most of the same materials remains unclear. In this talk, I will discuss recent work uncovering a photophysical degradation mechanism that explains this basic difference, as well as what it means for designing new molecules and device architectures aimed at increasing blue OLED lifetime.